In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Adam Volk chats with Gretchen Rubin, author and host of the award-winning podcast “Happier with Gretchen Rubin,” about Secrets of Adulthood: Simple Truths for Our Complex Lives (Crown/Penguin Random House, April 2025). In her latest bestseller, Rubin distills the secrets to a more fulfilling adult life into simple, memorable truths. An edited version of the conversation follows. You can watch the full video at the end of this page.
Why did you write this book?
A couple of threads came together. You think that you’ll get wiser as you get older, and that is just not true. We learn from experience, usually the hard way. I wanted to gather up all the secrets of adulthood that I have learned to give to my two daughters to save them from everything that I had to go through.
Also, I wanted to compile the secrets to remind myself of everything I have learned, because I often find myself learning the same lesson repeatedly. Working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination. I remind myself of that every week.
I love aphorisms. As a writer, I am very drawn to aphorisms because they’re a concise, elegant way of conveying an observation or an insight. I have a huge collection of aphorisms, and I have been pushing myself to write more aphoristically because it is so powerful. In writing the book, both of these elements came together: distilling my secrets of adulthood and expressing them in aphoristic form.
Was there anything that surprised you in the research, writing, or response?
I often thought that I’d understood something clearly. Yet when I tried to convey my idea, I realized that it was not as clear as I thought.
My thoughts were much vaguer than I realized because for me, writing is a way of thinking. By trying to write something down, I often force myself to clarify my thoughts. For example, one of my favorite aphorisms is, “We should try to accept ourselves and also expect more from ourselves.” That’s easy to say. But it took me months to understand that there’s a paradox. Both things are true and are very important for a happy life. Once I was able to say it concisely, then the idea was much clearer to me.
The book feels like a love letter to aphorisms. What is it about good aphorisms that makes them so powerful?
The aphorism is an ancient literary form, and it’s incredibly powerful. A lot of people don’t know what an aphorism is. Think about proverbs, which are the folk wisdom that we all know. An example could be, “A stitch in time saves nine.”
Some of my favorite proverbs are, “You can’t push a rope,” or “A stumble may prevent a fall.” These are wise sayings, but they’re just proverbial. With an aphorism, you know who said it.
Perhaps Warren Buffett said it, or Mark Twain said it, or [François de] La Rochefoucauld said it. That’s what an aphorism is. The idea of an aphorism is that it’s a big observation about human nature, some insight or observation expressed very concisely and, hopefully, elegantly.
Aphorisms are powerful and memorable primarily because they’re short. It is easier to remember things when they’re expressed concisely and there’s some kind of elegance.
Many aphorisms have an element of paradox or surprise. That keeps them in mind and makes them more influential in our lives. I find that, oftentimes, I forget what I’ve learned. Having something that is “stickier” means that it’s more powerful in my mind.
In the book, you note, ‘Happiness doesn’t always make us feel happy.’ Why is that the case?
That aphorism is an example of the surprise or paradox that can often make the message more powerful. It expresses the idea that if you’re a scientist, you must define happiness precisely, because you’re measuring something in a scientific way. There are about 15 or 17 academic definitions of happiness. But for the average person thinking about happiness in an ordinary way, what I mean by happiness not always making us feel happy is that sometimes there are things that we do that make our lives happier overall. Yet those actions don’t necessarily make us happy in the moment.
Many aphorisms have an element of paradox or surprise. That keeps them in mind and makes them more influential in our lives.
For example, I have a friend who went to visit his estranged father in the hospital. He didn’t want to go, and he didn’t look back on it with pleasure. In that sense, it didn’t make him feel happy. But by going, he was living up to his values. He thought, “I hate going to hospitals. I have a really tough relationship with my father. But he’s still my father. And the right thing to do is to go visit him in the hospital.”
Although going to the hospital didn’t make him feel happy, it still was a happier life for him to do it. That’s what I mean by happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy.
The book covers a lot, including self-improvement, relationships, and life choices. How did you structure these topics?
One of the challenges with this book was developing the structure. When I was writing the aphorisms, I wrote them however they occurred to me. I wrote hundreds! This book represents only the best ones.
Also, I included the only ones that I would consider to be a secret of adulthood where insight could help you figure out an issue that we face. I left out all the ones that I call “empty observations,” for example, “The periodic table of the elements is an ingredient list of the universe.” In developing the structure, I thought, “What are the big challenges of adulthood?” and “What are the secrets that people will find to be most helpful?” Those secrets could include confronting the perplexities of relationships. That is a significant challenge. My mother always says, “Everything would be easy if it weren’t for people.”
Another challenge is getting things done. How do we get ourselves to do the things we want ourselves to do? How do we get other people to do what we want them to do? How do we cultivate ourselves, especially when it comes to self-knowledge, self-improvement, and confronting life’s dilemmas? Oftentimes, when you’re looking for a secret of adulthood, you have a situation to navigate.
If you’re choosing between an apple and an orange, how do you decide? If you’re feeling stuck, how do you get yourself to move forward? Once I realized that those were the big themes, then I could see how there were groupings within them. But it was really challenging to understand the big themes.
At its best, work is fun. It is playful. It is creative. It is collaborative. It gives you an immense sense of satisfaction. It gives meaning to time. It gives you that feeling of progress and the satisfaction of learning.
In the book, you note that ‘Work is the play of adulthood’ and ‘People don’t talk enough about how comforting work is.’ How can work make us happier?
Work is a particularly important part of a happy life. It is one of the things we spend so much of our time on. At its best, work is the play of adulthood. This is interesting because if you know about the history of child psychology, many great leaders in child psychology will emphasize that play is the work of childhood.
Play is how children learn about the world. It’s how they learn to collaborate and how they learn about the properties of the physical world. Their work is to play. Yet work is the play of adulthood.
On the one hand, we want to accept ourselves, show compassion for ourselves, and understand who we are. On the other hand, we don’t want to be complacent.
At its best, work is fun. It is playful. It is creative. It is collaborative. It gives you an immense sense of satisfaction. It gives meaning to time. It gives you that feeling of progress and the satisfaction of learning. These are all kinds of play. At its best, work is the play of adulthood.
If you had to pick only one aphorism from the book to live your life by, what would it be?
Accept yourself and also expect more from yourself. Those are both profoundly important for a happy life. On the one hand, we want to accept ourselves, show compassion for ourselves, and understand who we are. On the other hand, we don’t want to be complacent. We want to push ourselves out of our comfort zone. We want to expect more from ourselves, but in a way that is realistic for us.
It is not realistic for me to think that I’m going to go bungee jumping. But maybe I could expect myself to get up and give a talk in front of 10,000 people. That might be expecting more from myself. But that is something within the ambit of my nature. Each one of us can figure out where that is. That’s another secret of adulthood. You’re unique, exactly like everybody else. We all have to figure these things out for ourselves.
Watch the full interview
